A Louisiana boy finds a home in Tennessee

Archive for January, 2014

I guess you could say that I’ve started looking for land for my cabin in the woods. Although the search sort of began in 2009, a heavy debt load made it pretty much impossible for me to close any deal I might stumble upon on my periodic internet searches for raw land.

The debt is for the most part gone now, so the search is in earnest. My goal is to own property by the end of September. I got sidetracked last year when I discovered HUD houses and HUD auctions. I got pre-approved for an FHA loan and put in a couple of bids on homes that would have been adequate for me and provide me with home fixing projects to last me well into retirement.

I even put in a contract on a log cabin in Madison that would have been perfect for me, until I had it inspected and discovered that the structural and electrical problems it had would have made it cheaper to build one from scratch. So I gave up on searching for inexpensive houses and returned to my quest for land.

1.5 acres, with most of it along the slope of a hill.

So far things have been interesting. A 1 1/2 acre site in Cheathem County with the asking price of $15,000 turned out to be a 50 x 100 lot with a backyard that sloped down the hill at about a 60 degree angle for several hundred feet. It was covered with tires.

10-acres with more old tires than “timber”

A 10-acre site in Hickman County that advertised harvestable timber was actually a gully on a steep mountainside that would have required a helicopter to get those logs out. It was full of trash, too.

Today’s search was better. A little more than 11 acres with a creek at the front of the property, $28,500. It was at the end of a gravel road, about 60 miles east of Nashville. A few acres of cleared land and the rest was forest on a steep mountainside. You had to drive across the creek to get to the land. Getting in or out after a heavy rain might have proven tricky and driving on that road after a snow could be downright challenging.

But the views. Man the views. This was a pretty piece of property. I had to drive a mile up the road to get a cell signal to call the real estate agent. Sadly, someone already made an offer and the seller accepted it yesterday.

The road leading to an 11.3-acre site about 60 miles east of Nashville

The search has reaffirmed the reason I want to own raw land in Tennessee in the first place. Tennessee is a beautiful place. My Roland and Bryan ancestors learned this more than 200 years ago when they settled here for a couple of generations. It’s fun following in their footsteps.

I don’t know whose house is on the top of that hill, but they’ve got a great view of this valley and more.